deanox

Unsure about Jurrah suspension wise but we have said he is available this week. Only last week there was a discussion on the club culture. Well this is how you change it; leaders (neald) set the standards and them enforce them. If you don't like it, bad luck. If we had any on field leaders setting the standards for the past 10 years, a) we wouldn't be in this mess, and B) the on field leaders would set the standards and enforce them. On field, we don't have any one mature enough, respected enough, or good enough to set the standards, thurs we have recruited these qualities in our coaches to ensure there is leadership and culture change. Great decision. Out may be to late for sylvia, but it won't be for watts, strauss etc.

According to the MFC website, if Jurrah hits his targets this week he will return through the VFL when the Scorps host Nth Ballarat. Great excuse to get out to Casey! http://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/7415/newsid/133897/default.aspx

My 2 bob worth. Certainly not everything that was wrong, but a few points I noted. - Our disposal is sub-standard, and WCE smashed us in this area today. We could not hit targets by foot, and we rarely kick to advantage (i.e. in front, behind, to the correct side). This needs serious improvement across the board, and is potentially the most important improvement we can make. - We get sucked in towards the ball like a bunch of under 10's. When there is a marking contest, too many players go up, and those that crumb get sucked in to within 2-3 meters; it seems to me that spillages often fall further than this. When there is a loose ball, too many of our players get sucked into the contest, and then either any short clearance goes out to a waiting oppositoon player (who held off) or we appear not to have players in any direction. Similarly often a second player leaves their man to assist in a tackle, leaving a free man outside the contest, which then results in the following: - We don't man up correctly. When we had the ball, the ball carrier was immediately pressured by an opponent, any give off went to a player who also had an opponent pressuring them thus the turn overs and rushed big kicks out of defence that usually are not to our advantage. When WCE got the ball, often the first ball carrier would be pressured by a player who left his opponent (i.e. has to move towards the ball carrier leaving an open man). As a result, the new loose man receives the ball, and is pressured in turn by another demon who leaves his opponent. This chain continues until a plaer is free with no pressure. (I am not trying to point the finger but in the last quarter it appeared that Petterd was responsible 3-4 times, he appeared to be loose in the centre when the first eagle got the ball as a loose man and then the chain of leaving your man started as a result) - We need to leave at least one permanant forwad in the 50!

Typing on the mobile does that!

Unfortunately "contested" passion can also be a loose ball get. Any time the ball is in dispute i.e. a loose bouncing ball on a wing, that counts as a contested poisson, any time the ball is delivered by hand or foot that is an uncontested possession. The exception being when the possession is won while under direct physical pressure (i.e. Contested mark).

Great point I've heard before. The reason everyone things of Franklin as being a marking machine is because he is taller than everyone else, so he plucks some, but he rarely is the better contested mark. He simply isn't that strong over head if you take his size out of the equation. Unfortunately Watts isn't quite that big. He will need to improve his marking to be a superstar, but obviously his role won't depend on that ability.

My opinion is that Conca's only intention was to block to allow him to take off and get a 5 m break on Adams. There was clearly no malice nor did it appear that he wanted to hurt him. I am not suggesting he didn't expect there to be contact, but I am thinking about the longer term repercussions. If a player, who is nowhere near the ball isn't responsible for looking where he is running, every player on the field now needs to ensure that any player he makes contact with is aware that the contact was coming before he bumps. The onus on the bumper has gone too far.

My problem is that Conca didn't actually clean up Adamas. Conca propped and Adams ran into him because he wasn't looking. After Conca stopped, it looked like Adams took 2 more steps before they collided. Conca shouldn't have caused the contact, but the semantics are important, Adams should be aware of where he is running.

Maybe Conca needs his own thread, but I'll put my 2 cents worth here for now. Should Conca have done what he did? No. Did Conca bump anyone maliciously? No. As far as I'm concerned, all he did was prop in front of a player, the other player wasn't watching where he was going and got hurt. Why doesn't that player have a duty of care to pay attention to where he is running? Why is Conca responsible to get out of another players way? Yes Conca should probably get a week because he caused contact of the ball, but he didn't hit him, he didnt forcefully bump him etc.

The difference is one poor decision in cricket is much more likely to have a major impact on a match and/or career than a single poor decision in footy. The same value is not added for the interruption to the event in footy for that reason.

About 3 weeks ago I heard from an internal staff member (not full time) within the fitness department that a new doctor had been appointed. My contact was couldn't remember the doctors name; there had been a lot of new names introduced over the previous couple of days!

How many teams were in the comp? 14? So that sounds like 5 picks in the first two rounds. Recruiting through the draft was a massive lottery that far back however we probably have made a decent shake of it. Only 6 players in the draft played over 100 games for their original club, and only another 3 played 50 games for their original club. Kowal was a solid player, who played over 100 games, which is a definite successful pick. Norrish was a great player who we lost to Freo, he went on to be vice captain and wond a B&F; our compensation was Donald Cockatoo-Collins! 2 out of 5 probably wasn't a bad strike rate for those days of recruiting!

I definitely think some of the theorey behind this is that we were small and got pushed around easily last year. Neeld wants us to be physically stronger. The current 22 (watts and jurrah, howe and green) aren't that sort of player, at least yet. The developing crop (cook, gawn) will take another 2-3 years before they are playing consistant senior footy, and probably another 1-2 before they are physically strong enough. By drafting Seller we add height and strength to the list. Will he play 20 games and be valuable? Who knows. But if we need to fill a gap with a mountain for the purpose of making a contest for Watts and Jurrah to run around near, he can probably do that, and no one else on our list can. And if the opposition does not respect him with a tall and strong opponent, he will likely stand out; against 2nd or 3rd tall defenders he will likely have a height and weight advantage, making him dangerous, even if he is only an average player. And if Seller takes that key defender it means Watts/Jurrah/Howe all step down the ladder to lesser defenders as well. OK so Mitch Clark might be taking this role most of the time, and is the better footballer of the two. But having Seller on the list does two things: one, it gives us versatility if Mitch goes down, or if he has to go into the ruck to cover Jamar, or Seller can go back if required as well. And, two, if he isn't playing AFL, Casey will have a big tall bloke up forward, playing a similar role to Mitch Clark. You may not think that helping Casey in this way is important. But as far as I'm concerned we want the players at Casey to play as similar to the MFC as possible, to make for easier transitions from VFL to AFL levels, and to aid player development. If we have a short forward line at Casey, how will we instigate the same game plan we use at AFL level?

RM, I agree that the genuine crumbing forward and a quick tight defender to play on opposition equivalents are holes in the list, but I think the crumbing forward is an icing on the cake position: for a crumber to be effective he needs contests to crumb off. We have drafted players to make contests. It really looks to me that we will start kicking it to contests, which we may not expect to win (i.e. mitch clark won't be taking 20 marks a week) but we will expect contests rather than kicks to unmarked opposition defenders like happened sometimes this year. RE the small quick defender, I am not sure how critical this position is. Sure we struggle to match up on a couple of these players, but we often use Frawley or Garland on La Cras or Milne to reasonable effect, and Benell and Bartram can fill that role without excelling. Unless we were going to pick up a player that would do the role better than any of our current options, it would be redundant drafting for it. And TBH I thought that was the sort of role that Josh Tynan currently plays (small defender, 187cm 76kgs, although perhaps he is more of a running defender rather than a tagging defender?).

I couldn't make it, but I can keep track of our progress from my desk thanks to technology!

Apparently Mark Neeld sees the triple threat of Bate, Juice and Clark up front as too hard to resist... Thr rumour I heard was that Ben Holland was fit and firing and thinking about nominating for the draft...Could it be a 4-pronged attack?

If I make it, will I get away with my metal studded rugby boots, or should I bring some flats?

So there are only 6 listed players, over the age of 22, and over 192 cm tall who have played 50 games or more, and at least one of them is a midfielder? And only 9 more between 40-50 games. Great work. It really does show that it takes time for a tall to cement their place. It also demonstrates how rare a genuine star KPP is (a Carey or a Brown) compared to a star midfielder. Or perhaps it highlights that we rate some midfielders higher than theyh deserve because they are involved in the play more than a KPP...

Rollo, I won't be able to confirm until Friday! Sorry for the late notice. It looks like you have 31 players though, so I doubt you'll miss me either way. Deanox

Don't know why anyone bothered watching; Australia v Russia (Rugby world cup) was on the other channel. Sure it wasn't a great match, but it was 80 minutes of entertainment almost right up until the first bounce!

Won't be in our best 4 mids if we are in premiership mode, but definitely will be in the mix due to rotations, all the extra mid fielders playing elsewhere on the ground and injuries (i.e. so could still potentially play every game). Does the grunt work, and as mentioned above has continued to improve. Is a good kick at goal imo, needs to get forward more than he does, where he will hurt the opposition.

Not exactly a break out year from Jack, but showed that he can play. I am expecting big things from him next year. Has shown he can be consistent, has shown he can take a mark and use the ball well. Did tire towards the end of the year, but hopefully he has learnt enough about how hard he needs to work to be up there with the best; he really did seem to wake up a bit.

I think with Bartram it is important that he knows his role and sticks to it. I'm not saying he needs to go to the ruckman school of" give off a handball instead of kicking, at every opportunity", but he needs to have a framework to describe his role. If his job is hard running, tight tackling, defensive player, he needs to shut his player down, work for the team and give it off. He also needs to take easy options when available and make sure that his 15 possessions a game are solid if not spectacular. If we have 22 better players than Clint, AND we have enough players who are as tough in the clinches, and do the team things right, then Clint will struggle to get a game. But I think one of the important shifts with the new regime will be that it doesn't matter how good you are, the team thing and the game plan, are more important. We will have 22 blokes playing as one team, not individuals flashing around doing their own things.

If that is what he does, has Collingwood effectively promoted their David Dunbar to a head coaching role? Not trying to say that David Dunbar isn't good at what he does, but his role to me didn't seem to have much to do with coaching, but more to do with checking who was fit, checking what they were doing at training and reporting back. I always thought of Dunbar as an opposition scout, someone who would answer to the opposition coach, or in our case, the head coach.

If we are to have another coach I believe it would be the "opposition coach" role that Buckley currently has at Collingwood. I think the role is a full time opposition analyst, who would be trying to both analysing how to break down the oppositions game plan, and how the opposition would be trying to break down our game plan. Not sure if we need this appointment, but it is part of the Collingwood structure that Neeld has come from.